Articles: Influence, Relationship & Human Performance Skills Archives
04/2003 “Managing Up” Influencing Those To Whom You Report
09/1999 Achieve Goals And Results By Dealing With "unwritten Rules"
Why care about unwritten rules?
Whether your firm functions in a relatively ad hoc manner or it has more centralized management with many formal rules, as any organization, it is also run by unwritten rules. While these can be helpful, they can also be a serious obstacle to achieving stated objectives. An organization must identify them and take them seriously because they frequently conflict with written rules and policies for change and improvement.
05/1999 How to Change Unwritten Rules
04/1998 Teaching Meeting Facilitation Skills
“Help! One of our partners has been asked by a client to facilitate a day long session at their association conference. He's never done this before,” declared a marketing director seeking a quick infusion of skills training.
Most lawyers have little meeting facilitation experience, and they are not natural facilitators for several reasons: They are trained to be advocates rather than neutral parties.They tend to be better talkers than listeners. They tend to think of furthering their own agendas. Often they don't carefully plan their meetings; they just show up and have their minds on leaving to get back to client work. In addition, most lawyers are not process-oriented.